Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level, yet today's surgical tools are too large to deal with that kind of problem.

1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions
1999 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award
2000 RSA award for the invention of public key cryptography. Career
Merkle was the manager of compiler development at Elxsi from 1980. Hamming Medal in 2010.

Ralph C. Merkle appears in the science fiction novel The Diamond Age involving nanotechnology.